The digital divide in Australia is narrowing as more people become internet users. Three billion people globally are online today, with some eight new users every second.

The United Nations emphasised bridging the digital divide as part of the Millennium Development Goals. However, although the costs of telephone and internet services have declined, digital disparities persist in many developing countries. The 2015 ICT Development Index reveals that, while the internet penetration rate in the developed world sits at 81%, two-thirds of the developing world are still without access.

So far, the issue of the digital divide is largely seen as a gap in access to information and communication technologies (ICT). This access-centric discourse has led the development community to focus overwhelmingly on improving physical access to technology. In doing so, they believe they can bridge the gap between developed and developing nations.

The International Telecommunications Union annual reports regularly recommend ways to improve “connectivity”. These include reducing the price of broadband and telecommunication subscriptions. Since 2003, the World Bank has spent more than US$9 billion on ICT development aid in more than 100 developing countries.

The five dimensions of digital inequality

Policymakers have a tendency to use a single factor, such as access, to judge ICT development. Digital inequality cannot be reduced, however, to a binary view of access. Governments and development bodies need to differentiate between types of online activity and pay attention to the inequalities among internet users.

We can break the digital divide down into five dimensions of inequality.

Adapted from Hargittai & DiMaggio (2001).

Inequality, in technical use, refers to the varying degrees of physical access to the internet and how that might affect an individual’s usage. For example, lack of broadband in rural America has been shown to negatively affect socioeconomic opportunities, out-migration and social connections in remote communities.

The extent to which people have autonomy in their internet use depends on where, when and how often they use it. New studies of “cyberslacking” reveal that people in higher positions at work tend to use the internet for more personal purposes than their lower-status colleagues. Contrary to previous assumptions, personal use of the internet at work is not only a distinctive trait of people who lack home-internet access, but also of those with higher levels of computer literacy.

Evidently, inequality in skill – broadly defined to include technical, cognitive and socioeconomic factors – affects if and how the internet is used. A concept like “digital literacy”, which is defined as “mastering ideas, not keystrokes”, suggests that being part of the information society goes beyond having access to a computer.

Knowledge of English (the de facto language of the internet) can determine one’s likelihood of being part of the digital world. Empirical studies across non-English-speaking countries find that a lack of English knowledge can impair an individual’s online experience, as well as their ability to retain information.

All this points to a need to rethink ICT development policies, to place greater emphasis on the socio-economic conditions that underpin access. We need to avoid policies that do not tackle inequality in a holistic manner.

Lessons from Thailand, India and Peru

Thailand’s 2011 One Tablet Per Child scheme aimed to provide nearly one million free tablets to schoolchildren. The widely criticised scheme, costing taxpayers US$50 million, was flawed from the start.

Critics argue that the policy was a populist campaign measure, not a well-thought-out plan to reduce digital inequality. Many doubted that teachers would receive proper training. Instead, they believed the government would dump the tablets onto teachers without a concrete implementation plan or consideration for those who did not know how to use them.

The microchip manufacturer Intel, which helped with the technical launch of the program, was also concerned about “the lack of electricity and adequate facilities” to support tablet use in some schools.

In Thailand’s 2011 election campaign, Yingluck Shinawatra promised to deliver the One Tablet Per Child scheme.flickr/Ratchaprasong, CC BY

Overall, the program’s achievements have been mixed. It took nearly two years for the pilot project to roll out because the government could not get a manufacturer to produce the tablets at the price it had promised voters.

Even if schools received the tablets, some were not equipped to implement the program. A report based on 12 primary schools in 2013 shows that only half the schools had internet connectivity fast enough for tablet use. It also reveals that school administrators were not provided with any guide for incorporating learning through the tablets, and not all teachers knew how to use and maintain the tablets.

If the overall policy goal was to improve the education of Thai students in disadvantaged areas, the government neglected to set out assessment criteria.

The One Tablet Per Child Policy is now dead following the ousting of the government in the May 2014 coup.

A similar project on a larger scale failed to even get off the ground in India. The plan was to make 22 million Aakash Tablets available to students at a subsidised price of $35. The politicians overpromised on technologies that could not yet be delivered.

When the policy was conceived, there seemed to be little discussion, let alone forethought, about the infrastructure and support for use.

Likewise, five years in, the Peruvian government’s $200 million tablets-to-schoolchildren policy is difficult to justify. Poor teacher training in poorly equipped schools in remote areas has left many doubtful about the effectiveness of the program.

The official even lamented that the digital gap among students may have widened.

In the classroom, teacher training and digital literacy programs are essential if internet access is to help reduce the digital divide.Wikimedia Commons/OLPC, CC BY

What next for the digital divide?

Policymakers who dream of digital technologies as the quick fix to their development problem need to think twice before committing financial resources to policies that look good on paper, but fail in practice. Part of this failure is due to the technologically deterministic approach officials take. Another element is the view that a development gap can be closed by a tool or through internet access.

The clear lesson from Thailand, India and Peru is that reducing digital inequality depends on much more than access to products. Instead, it’s about developing human capital that will allow society to benefit from technological advancement.

Instead of brandishing cheap tablet policies to woo their constituents, politicians should consider the socioeconomic conditions required for a policy to succeed.

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2 weeks agoby sydneydemocracyProfessor Baogang He, Alfred Deakin Professor, Chair in International Relations, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts & Education, Deakin University and Professor John Keane interrogate authoritarianism and democracy at ACRI UTS

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A closer look at the way politics has changed
Authoritarian populists have disrupted politics in many societies, as seen in the U.S. and the UK. This event brings together two

Event Details

A closer look at the way politics has changed

Authoritarian populists have disrupted politics in many societies, as seen in the U.S. and the UK. This event brings together two leading scholars to discuss their new books and the power of populist authoritarianism.

Authoritarian populist parties have gained votes and seats in many countries, and entered government in states as diverse as Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland. Across Europe, their average share of the vote in parliamentary elections remains limited but it has more than doubled since the 1960s and their share of seats tripled. Even small parties can still exert tremendous ‘blackmail’ pressure on governments and change the policy agenda, as demonstrated by UKIP’s role in catalyzing Brexit.

The danger is that populism undermines public confidence in the legitimacy of liberal democracy while authoritarianism actively corrodes its principles and practices. It also increases the resolve of authoritarian regimes around the world. This public forum sets out to explain the growth and character of these regimes and the polarisation over the cultural cleavage dividing social liberals and social conservatives in the electorates, and how these differences of values translate into support for authoritarian-populist parties and leaders in the U.S. and Europe, and elsewhere. The forum highlights the dangers to liberal democracy arising from these developments and what could be done to mitigate the risks.

This event brings together Professor Pippa Norris and Professor John Keane to discuss their new books and the power of populist authoritarianism.

Professor Pippa Norris will discuss her new book Cultural Backlash: The Rise of Populist Authoritarianism. Professor John Keane will discuss his new book When trees fall, monkeys scatter.

The Speakers:

Pippa Norris will discuss her new book Cultural Backlash: The Rise of Populist Authoritarianism. Pippa is a comparative political scientist who has taught at Harvard for more than a quarter century. She is ARC Laureate Fellow and Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, the Paul F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and Director of the Electoral Integrity Project. Her research compares public opinion and elections, political institutions and cultures, gender politics, and political communications in many countries worldwide. She is ranked the 4th most cited political scientist worldwide, according to Google scholar. Major honors include, amongst others, the Skytte prize, the Karl Deutsch award, and the Sir Isaiah Berlin award. Her current work focuses on a major research project, www.electoralintegrityproject.com, established in 2012 and also a new book with Ronald Inglehart “Cultural Backlash” analyzing support for populist-authoritarianism.

John Keane will discuss his new book When Trees Fall, Monkeys Scatter: rethinking democracy in China. He is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), and Distinguished Professor at Peking University. He is renowned globally for his creative thinking about democracy. He is the Director and co-founder of the Sydney Democracy Network. He has contributed to The New York Times, Al Jazeera, the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Harper’s, the South China Morning Post and The Huffington Post. His online column ‘Democracy field notes’ appears regularly in the London, Cambridge- and Melbourne­-based The Conversation. Among his best-known books are the best-selling Tom Paine: A political life (1995), Violence and Democracy (2004), Democracy and MediaDecadence (2013) and the highly acclaimed full-scale history of democracy, The Life and Death of Democracy (2009). His most recent books are A Short History of the Future of Elections (2016) and When Trees Fall, Monkeys Scatter (2017), and he is now completing a new book on the global spread of despotism.

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Speaker: Professor Gerry Stoker, University of Southampton
Some contemporary democracies appear plagued by anti-politics, a set of negative attitudes held towards politicians and the political process. In this

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Some contemporary democracies appear plagued by anti-politics, a set of negative attitudes held towards politicians and the political process. In this seminar Gerry Stoker explains how and why anti-political sentiment has grown among British citizens over the last half-century drawing on research about to be published in a Cambridge University Press book co-authored with Nick Clarke, Will Jennings and Jonathan Moss. The book offers a range of conceptual developments to help explore how citizens think about politics and the issue of negativity towards politics and uses responses to public opinion surveys alongside a unique data source-the diaries, reports and letters collected by Mass Observation. The book reveals that anti-politics has grown in scope and intensity when seen through the lens of a long view of the issue stretching back over multiple decades. Such growth is explained by citizens’ changing images of ‘the good politician’ and changing modes of political interaction between politicians and citizens. The seminar will conclude by placing these findings in a broader comparative context and exploring the implications for efforts to reform and improve democratic politics.

Chair: Dr Thomas Wynter

Discussant: Professor Ariadne Vromen

Time

(Tuesday) 11:45 am - 1:30 pm

Location

Room 276

Merewether Building, University of Sydney http://sydney.edu.au/arts/about/maps.shtml?locationID=[[H04]]

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Human rights are in freefall across a number of countries in South East Asia. Last year, the Burmese military carried out a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing against

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Human rights are in freefall across a number of countries in South East Asia. Last year, the Burmese military carried out a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine State causing more than 650,000 Rohingyas to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s murderous “war on drugs” has claimed more than 12,000 victims, predominantly the urban poor, including children. And the Cambodian government’s broad political crackdown in 2017 targeting the political opposition, independent media and human rights groups has effectively extinguished the country’s flickering democratic system at the expense of basic rights.

Australia’s 2017 White Paper includes the goals of “promoting an open, inclusive and prosperous Indo–Pacific region in which the rights of all states are respected” as well as the need to protect and promote the international rules based order. So what role does Australia play in addressing these problems and what more could the Australian government be doing?

To discuss these matters, we are delighted to welcome Elaine Pearson.

Elaine Pearson is the Australia Director at Human Rights Watch. Based in Sydney, she works to influence Australian foreign and domestic policies in order to give them a human rights dimension. She regularly briefs journalists, politicians and government officials, appears on television and radio programs, testifies before parliamentary committees and speaks at public events. She is an adjunct lecturer in law at the University of New South Wales. From 2007 to 2012 she was the Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division based in New York.

Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Elaine worked for the United Nations and various non-governmental organizations in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Kathmandu and London. She is an expert on migration and human trafficking issues and sits on the board of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women. Pearson holds degrees in law and arts from Australia’s Murdoch University and obtained her Master’s degree in public policy at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

She writes frequently for publications including Harper’s Bazaar, the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal.

Event Details

Although Michel Foucault never refers explicitly to the problematic of political theology, his genealogical analyses of the mechanisms of power in secular modernity reveal their religious origins and the way

Event Details

Although Michel Foucault never refers explicitly to the problematic of political theology, his genealogical analyses of the mechanisms of power in secular modernity reveal their religious origins and the way they emerge out of ecclesiastical institutions and practices. However, I will suggest that Foucault’s contribution to political theology in a sense turns the paradigm on its head and signals a radical departure from the Schmittian model.

Foucault does not seek to sanctify power and authority in modernity, but rather to disrupt their functioning and consistency by identifying their hidden origins, unmasking their contingency and indeterminacy, and bringing before our gaze historical alternatives. Furthermore, Foucault introduces to the debate around political theology something that was entirely missing from it – the idea of the subject. The notion of the ‘confessing subject’ – the individual who, from earliest Christian times, has been taught to confess his secrets and thus form a truth about himself – is central to Foucault’s concerns, as are the ethical strategies through which the subject might constitute himself in alternative ways that allow a greater degree of autonomy. And while in the past, religious institutions and practices, particularly the Christian pastorate, have sought to render the subject obedient and governable, at other times, including in modernity, religious ideas have been a source of disobedience, revolt and what Foucault calls ‘counter-conducts’. It is here that I will develop the idea of ‘political spirituality’, showing how this notion can operate as a radical counter-point to political theology.

About the speaker:

Saul Newman is Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London and currently a Visiting Professor at the Sydney Democracy Network. His research is in continental political thought and contemporary political theory. Mostly known for his research on postanarchism, he also works on questions of sovereignty, human rights, as well as on the thought of the nineteenth century German individualist anarchist, Max Stirner. His most recent work is on political theology and post-secular politics, and he has a new book forthcoming with Polity called Political Theology: a Critical Introduction.

Time

(Thursday) 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Location

Seminar Room 498

Merewether Building, University of Sydney

Organizer

Department of Government and International Relationsmadeleine.pill@sydney.edu.au